TypoScript Lint: CGL validation for TypoScript

Author

Martin Helmich (typo3 at martin-helmich dot de)

Synopsis

This package contains a tool that can parse TYPO3's configuration language, "TypoScript", into an syntax tree and perform static code analysis on the parsed code. typoscript-lint can generate Checkstyle-compatible output and can be used in Continuous Integration environments.

Why?!

This project started of as a private programming excercise. I was writing an article for the T3N magazine on Continuous Integration for TYPO3 projects, introducing tools like JSHint or CSSLint, and I noticed that no comparable tools exist for TypoScript. So I thought, "What the heck, let's go" and at some point realized that my little programming excercise might actually be useful to someone. So, that's that. Enjoy.

Code validation

Features

Certain aspects of code validation are organized into so-called "sniffs" (I borrowed the term from PHP's CodeSniffer project). Currently, there are sniffs for checking the following common mistakes or code-smells in TypoScript:

Indentation

The indentation level should be increased with each nested statement. In the configuration file, you can define whether you prefer tabs or spaces for indentation.

foo {
    bar = 2
  baz = 5
# ^----------- This will raise a warning!
}

Dead code

Code that was commented out just clutters your source code and obstructs readability. Remove it, that's what you have version control for (you do use version control, do you?).

foo {
    bar.baz = 5
    #baz.foo = Hello World
#   ^----------- This will raise a warning!
}

Whitespaces

Check that no superflous whitespace float around your operators.

#   v----------- This will raise a warning (one space too much)
foo  {
    bar= 3
#      ^-------- This will also raise a warning (one space too few)
}

Repeating values

If the same value is assigned to different objects, it might be useful to extract this into a TypoScript constant.

foo {
    bar = Hello World
    baz = Hello World
#         ^----- Time to extract "Hello World" into a constant!

Duplicate assignments

Assigning a value to the same object multiple times. Works across nested statements, too.

foo {
    bar = baz
#   ^----------- This statement is useless, because foo.bar is unconditionally overwritten!
}
foo.bar = test

The sniff is however smart enough to detect conditional overwrites. So the following code will not raise a warning:

foo {
    bar = baz
}

[globalString = ENV:foo = bar]
foo.bar = test
[global]

Nesting consistency

This sniff checks if nesting assignments are used in a consistent manner. Consider the following example:

foo {
    bar = test1
}

foo {
    baz = test2
}

In this case, the two nested statements might very well be merged into one statement.

Consider another example:

foo {
    bar = test1
}

foo.baz {
    bar = test2
}

In this case, both statements could be nested in each other.

Calling tslint

Call tslint as follows:

bin/typoscript-lint lint path/to/your.ts

By default, it will print a report on the console. To generate a checkstyle-format XML file, call as follows:

bin/typoscript-lint -f xml -o checkstyle.xml path/to/your.ts

Configuration

typoscript-lint looks for a file tslint.yml in the current working directory. If such a file is found, it will be merged with the tslint.dist.yml from the installation root directory. Have a look at said file for an idea of what you can configure (granted, not much yet).

Future features

Sniffs for more code smells (ideas are welcome)
Full test coverage (no, I did not do TDD. Shame on me.)

hexa2k9 / typo3-typoscript-lint